


The Impossible Soldier

by sheliesshattered (glasscannon)



Series: For As Long As We Get [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s08e06 The Caretaker, F/M, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, POV Clara Oswin Oswald, Post-Episode: The Day of the Doctor, Post-Episode: s08e04 Listen, Post-Episode: s08e06 The Caretaker, argument, if that bothers you maybe skip this one, no hints of Pinkwald here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21932842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/pseuds/sheliesshattered
Summary: The Doctor cut her off with a look and the words died on her tongue. He threw the lever to send them back into the Vortex, holding her gaze.“I’m not taking you home,” he said, voice low and threatening. “Or anywhere else. You still haven’t explained himtome.”After disposing of the Skovox Blitzer, the Doctor demands an explanation of Clara's obvious boyfriend error. The truth behind it is more than either of them bargained for. AU ofThe Caretaker.
Relationships: Clara Oswin Oswald & Danny Pink, The War Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: For As Long As We Get [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642132
Comments: 32
Kudos: 165





	The Impossible Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> This goes AU during the last scene of _The Caretaker_ and blithely waves goodbye to canon after that.

It took more fast talking than Clara wanted to think about, but she managed to disentangle herself from Danny, making excuses about helping the Doctor dispose of the alien-robot-thing somewhere where it wouldn’t hurt anyone. The look Danny gave her was too knowing, too kind, she couldn’t stand to face him. She wondered, not at all idly, if she could extend this trip in the TARDIS, talk the Doctor into an adventure before taking her home. She didn’t wonder if she would be able to lie to Danny about it when she got back — she’d gotten far too good at lying to him already. One more little fib wouldn’t change the fabric of their relationship in the slightest.

Of course, first she would have to face the Doctor, who was all stony silences and glowering eyebrows, even after they’d sent the Skovox Blitzer drifting off into deep space. What Clara needed was a distraction before this all came plummeting down around her ears. Quickly she paged through her memory for the name of a place they had considered visiting but hadn’t yet seen, settling on the first one that came to her.

“Before you take me home, I was thinking we could squeeze in a visit to—” 

The Doctor cut her off with a look and the words died on her tongue. He threw the lever to send them back into the Vortex, holding her gaze.

“I’m not taking you home,” he said, voice low and threatening. “Or anywhere else. You still haven’t explained _ him _ to _ me_.”

“Who? Danny?” she said lightly, trying to shrug it off. She needed _ distraction_, not the Doctor hyperfocused on the one topic she couldn’t have him thinking about too deeply.

His expression soured further. “Feigned stupidity is not a good look on you, Miss Oswald.”

Clara crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s my boyfriend,” she said, letting her tone make it clear that she didn’t see any reason they should be discussing this in the first place. “He’s a maths teacher and he’s my boyfriend and he’s perfectly ordinary. I don’t know what you expect me to explain.”

“Why _ him_?” the Doctor bit out.

“Why does anyone date anyone?” she shot back, her mind horrifically blank of any reasonable answer to his question. _ Why Danny? _Because that was the road she was on, and she didn’t have the luxury of skipping off onto a new one, magic blue box or not.

“You’re not just _ dating _ him, Clara,” he said, sharp. “You said so yourself, he’s more than that. And I need to know _ why_.”

“It’s just one of those ridiculous little human oddities,” she said, before something much worse could find its way into her voice. “We date, we fall in love, we get married and make babies. Surely you’ve spent enough time around us to understand at least the basic outline of that.”

“There are more than seven billion humans on Earth in your time period, Clara. Why _ that one_?”

“We’re coworkers,” she said levelly. “Lots of relationships start at work.”

“And you work with lots of people,” he countered, not giving her an inch. “Why P.E. out of everyone you could have chosen? Explain him to me!”

She could feel her temper rising, and tried to keep it under control. “First of all, he’s a _ maths _ teacher, not P.E. — or you could use his name, which is _ Danny_, which you very well know. And secondly, there’s nothing to explain! I didn’t sit down and write out a list of pros and cons, I just met someone at work and we hit it off. If it’s confusing to you that’s only because it’s the sort of trivial thing that you usually ignore or delete or catnap through, or whatever it is you do.”

He snorted humourlessly. “If I could delete this, believe me I would, but you’ve made that impossible.”

“Why do you care?” Clara snapped, her patience running thin. “When you thought I was dating Adrian you actually seemed _ happy _about it! But when I tell you it’s not Adrian, it’s Danny, suddenly it’s the end of the world!”

“I care because you’re lying!” he barked, gaze flicking to hers.

“I am not lying!” she insisted. She was an excellent liar, even when lying about lying.

“Yes you are! Lying to me, lying to P.E., that’s bad enough. But you’re lying to yourself, which is even worse!”

“How?” she demanded. “How am I lying to myself?”

The Doctor gave her a look like she was being intentionally obtuse. 

“_How_, Doctor?”

“You said you love him!” he finally replied, the words bursting from him. 

“I know what I said!”

“You can’t love _ him_, Clara! You can’t be in love with a soldier!”

The _ nerve _of the man! “What the hell is wrong with me being in love with a soldier?”

“He represents everything we fight against, every time we go out those doors!” the Doctor said, anger making his gestures sharp and sweeping. “And you want to build a life with him? Either you’re lying or you’re not the person I thought you were, and I’m not sure which is worse.”

Clara took a step back, wounded. “How _ dare _you?” she demanded, retaking the ground she had lost. “It’s not like you left me with any other choice!”

“Me?? How is this _ my _fault?”

“You’re the one who told me you are not my boyfriend! That was your decision, not mine!”

“I’m not your boyfriend!” he retorted, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Oh yes, you’ve made that _ very _clear,” she hissed. “But that hasn’t stopped you from interfering in my love life, has it? ‘Accidentally’ showing up minutes before I’m meant to leave on a date, dropping my own future into the middle of my first time out with Danny! I didn’t even get to decide if I actually like him, you took that choice away from me too!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Orson Pink! The time-traveller from the end of the universe, who you just _ had _ to go and rescue and then send to fetch me during my date! It’s a wonder you didn’t erase him from history with that little stunt.”

“Clara, honestly, I have no idea what you’re on about.”

“You found him by using the trace of me still in the telepathic circuits, yeah? Someone connected to my timeline, from years in my future, who bore a _ striking _resemblance to Danny, shared family name and everything.” 

“Nope, still not getting it.”

She growled in frustration. “He’s my grandson, Doctor! Mine and Danny’s. Or great-grandson, maybe — I didn’t think it would be safe to press him for too many family details. And you sent him to interrupt my first date with the man I apparently someday marry and have children with! You showed me my own future, it’s not like I could just choose to walk away from Danny after that.”

“That’s not your future, Clara. That’s not how time works!”

“Now who’s lying?” Clara scoffed at him. “I’ve travelled with you long enough to have picked up a few things, Doctor. I am not an idiot. This is exactly like Professor Palmer and Emma Grayling, down to the time-travelling descendent.”

The Doctor paused before replying, watching her expectantly, as though waiting for her to catch the flaw in her own logic. “And if you remember, I wasn’t able to return young Miss Tacorien to her own time!” he said finally. “Her disappearance was a fixed point, we couldn’t change that. But we _ were _ able to take Colonel Pink back to his time, and do you know why? Because in the end, he didn’t matter that much to the universe. He’s a potentiality, one _ possible _future, that’s all!”

“But I’ve _ seen _that future now! That must have made it some kind of fixed point.”

“You still get the choice, Clara, your life is still yours. And that _ still _ doesn’t explain why you’d choose to go out with a soldier in the first place!”

“_Former _soldier, and current maths teacher!”

“How ‘former’ can it be if he’s dressing up in uniform to teach all your impressionable pudding-brains how to be good little soldiers in their free time? Do you know, in some cultures, that’d be seen as downright _ ghastly_, indoctrinating children that way.”

“You have no right to judge him like that!”

“Of course I have the right!” the Doctor thundered back. “I have the only right that matters! I fought in a bigger war than your Dan the Soldier Man will ever know! I have done worse things than he could ever imagine! And I have dedicated my life to ensuring that no one else ever has to live that way, no one else ever has to feel that pain! _ That _is what we’re doing outside those doors!”

“You really can’t see it, can you?” Clara said. “How utterly hypocritical all of this is.”

“How can you travel with me and be in love with him? How can _ you _be that hypocritical?”

“But me dating Adrian, _ that _would have been fine? I could travel with you and go home to some floppy-haired, bowtie-wearing—” 

“Adrian being your type makes sense! That I can believe! But when did _ soldiers _become your thing?”

“When did soldiers become my thing?? When did I start believing in impossible heroes? _ Seriously_? I’ll never understand how you can be a bloody intergalactic genius and still such an absolute idiot!” Clara seethed, storming towards the console with one destination in mind.

“What are you doing?” the Doctor demanded, rounding the console to keep her in sight.

“Ending this,” she bit back.

He moved to stop her, of course, but she’d already reached the control panel she needed. “Clara, whatever it is you’re planning to do—” 

She slid her fingers into the telepathic circuit and closed her eyes, ignoring his threatening tone. “Show me the soldier I’m in love with,” she said to the TARDIS, voicing it out loud for the Doctor’s benefit. 

“Don’t you dare!”

The console beeped, and Clara opened her eyes, meeting the Doctor’s ferocious, terrified glare. “Go on, Doctor,” she said coolly, nodding at the monitor, “see for yourself.”

“Lie to yourself all you want,” the Doctor spat back, eyes decidedly on her rather than the monitor. “The telepathic circuits can’t be so easily fooled.”

“Exactly. You know whatever’s on that screen is the truth. So go on, _ look_.”

He stared at her a moment longer, then turned away and pulled the monitor to him with harsh movements. Clara watched the emotions track across his expressive face, anger replaced by confusion, then shock and disbelief. She didn’t need to be able to see the image on the screen to know who was staring back at him. There was only one face it _ could _be. She’d tried to hide it from him for his own good, and clearly that had gotten them nothing but trouble. 

She was done hiding. If the Doctor insisted on absolute honesty, he could live with the consequences.

“_Him_?” he demanded, looking over at her. 

“You said it yourself, I can’t lie to the telepathic circuits.”

He turned back to the monitor, disbelief still etched deeply onto his face. “Really??”

“Former soldier, trying to do the right thing but carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and those big sad eyes? Yeah, you could say I have a type.”

The Doctor opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again, confounded. “But _ him_? Grumpy granddad?”

She huffed a suppressed, annoyed laugh and extracted her hands from the telepathic circuit. “Technically he’s more than a thousand years younger than you.”

“_In love_? With _ him_??” he demanded again. “You hardly knew him for a single day!”

Clara rolled her eyes, still too infuriated with him to find any of this endearing. “_He _ is _ you_, you idiot! But when you changed your face, you made it clear that you don’t think of me in that way, and that’s — that’s _ fine_. I can respect that. But don’t you dare lecture me on falling in love with soldiers, don’t you dare. I never so much as gave one a passing glance before you.”

“I’m not a soldier, Clara,” he sighed, rubbing at his forehead. 

“Neither is Danny! Not anymore.”

“And that’s why you love him,” the Doctor said, voice subdued.

She bit down on the tortured sob that tried to escape her chest and said as evenly as possible, “If I was in love with him, then his face would have come up on the monitor.” And if there had been a shadow of a doubt in her mind as to whose face the telepathic circuits would pull from her thoughts, she never would have risked it.

“But you said—” 

“Danny is nice and normal and stable and everything I _ should _want. And apparently there’s a future for us, a future that leads to Orson Pink. I just have to keep it together and not screw things up long enough for it to get here. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“To shut you up,” she told him honestly, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. “I didn’t want you looking at it too closely. It was hard enough managing Danny’s reactions to the whole thing. I couldn’t have you blurting out the obvious truth in front of him, not if I want that future with him.”

“Obvious?” the Doctor scoffed.

“I thought it would be, to you. I’ve never been particularly good at hiding my feelings for you. Complete strangers pick up on it every other week, seems like.”

“And do you? Want that future with him?”

She looked up at him, held his gaze until she had to blink back tears. “Do I have any choice? Really? Now that I’ve met Orson Pink, now that I’ve seen that future — now that I’ve told you the truth and destroyed the comforting lie we’ve lived with for so long? You’ll _ leave_, Doctor.” 

“I won’t,” he interrupted her, but she took a deep breath and plowed ahead.

“You _ will_. If not today, then someday, you’ll leave and you won’t come back. And I’ll have to make the best of it, move on with the rest of my life. So this is me,” she spread her arms wide, half a shrug, “making the best of it.” 

She let her words settle into the silence around them, staring up at him so he could see the truth of it. There was really nothing else to say, and she didn’t know how to face his rejection yet again, so she turned towards the stairs. She could go hide away in her bedroom until the Doctor decided to take her home. If she was lucky, he would add this to the long list of moments they resolutely did not discuss, and they could go back to the precarious balance they’d lived with since he’d regenerated.

And if she was unlucky, well — she’d always known she would have to move on. She’d always known she would leave this with her heart broken. Part of her didn’t want to delay the inevitable any longer.

“He was in love with you too, you know,” the Doctor said, his low voice halting her in her tracks with her back to him.

“Who?” she asked, not turning around.

“That grumpy old soldier you met. You breezed in like a miracle on the worst day of his life, and stayed his hand from committing the most evil act imaginable. He was utterly besotted with you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and felt a tear track down her cheek. “But not anymore,” she murmured, and took another step towards the stairs.

“_Clara_,” the Doctor said. Quick footsteps closed the distance between them, and he caught her hand in his, spinning her to face him. His blue eyes were tortured, ancient and anguished. “He never stopped.”

Another tear slipped down her face but she forced a little smile. “A part of you will always love me for who I was to you on that day. I understand. But it’s not enough. That’s a past, not a future.”

He was still holding her hand, and dropped his gaze towards it. “Do you want that future with Danny?” he asked, voice gravelly. “That nice, normal, stable future? Is that what you _ want_?”

Somehow it was easier to say when she didn’t have to look into the Doctor’s eyes. “I’m afraid if I admit even to myself that it _ isn’t _ what I want, Danny will know, and he’ll hate me for it,” she murmured.

“It’s still your life, Clara. You still get the choice,” he said again, so much gentler than before. He let her hand go, just as gently. “Seeing one potential future doesn’t rob you of that choice. If you choose Danny, I won’t— I won’t jeopardise it, I won’t stand in the way or question your decision. But...”

They hesitated in the buzzing silence of the console room, and Clara couldn’t help but feel that the TARDIS was holding her breath, too.

“But?” she prompted when the Doctor didn’t continue, too afraid to hope.

“You could make the other choice,” he said, finally looking up at her from underneath his brows. “It’s not just a part of me, Clara. It’s all of me, from the first moment you tumbled into my life. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop.”

Her heart thudded against her ribs, but she had to know for certain, she had to hear it. “If you mean it, then say it,” she replied, voice cracking, knowing her control freak tendencies were bleeding through but unable to stop herself.

He huffed a soft laugh, as though thinking the exact same thing. “I love you, Clara Oswald,” he said, holding her gaze. “And I can’t stand the idea of you wasting your life on anything less than exactly what you want.”

Clara drew a shaky breath, feeling poised on the edge of a precipice. She wanted to cross the short distance between them, throw her arms around his neck and snog him breathless. She wanted to repeat the words back to him, she wanted to say them to him every day until the day she died. She wanted it to be _ true_, for this really to be happening, but something held her back.

“What happened to ‘not your boyfriend’?” she asked instead, everything else she wanted to say crowding on her tongue. 

The Doctor shook his head, looking away again. “I was trying to save you,” he said. “Trenzalore changed me. Not just my face, but all those centuries there without you. Watching the people of Christmas die around me, the years slipping through my fingers. You _ should _want nice and normal and stable, everything I’m not. But I’m done making that decision for you.”

“I’ll die on you, too, you know,” she said, the words tumbling out of her, the stark truth of their inevitable tragedy as painful as the idea of walking away from him now. He winced and turned his face further from her, but she reached up and laid her palm on his cheekbone. “No, listen to me. If we choose this future, if we’re really going to do this,” her voice broke and she swallowed past it, willing herself to be brave, “then we’re doing it with our eyes wide open. No more lies, no more hiding. We can have this, we can take this time and make it _ ours_, but it won’t mean anything if we aren’t honest with each other. You _ will _outlive me.”

He finally turned his gaze back to hers, eyes bright blue through gathering tears. “_Clara_,” he said, the plea clear in his voice.

She blinked back tears of her own, trying to hold to her bravery. “I know what you’re like when you’ve lost someone, I remember your other faces well enough to know that. And I am exactly selfish enough to want to sign you up for that pain again, a decade or five down the road. But if you don’t want it, if you don’t think you could...”

He took her hand from his face and kissed her knuckles. “It’s too late, anyway. First face this face saw. It’ll hurt no matter what we do.”

Clara hesitated, gathering her courage, and whispered, “Then maybe we ought to let ourselves be truly happy, in the time we do have.”

“The Doctor will outlive you,” he said, dropping her gaze again but holding tightly to her hand. “But this face might not. I wore the last face for almost a thousand years, but the one before that — less than a decade, and he made an awful fuss about going. I don’t want to put you through that again, but in the end I won’t have any say in the matter.”

“But you’ll still be _ you_,” she said, trying not to think about how much pain that would cause both of them. “Those other faces of yours I met, the old soldier and the one in the pinstripe suit, they were you, too. And all the others in my echo memories, they’re all _ you_.”

He shook his head. “You knew all that the day I regenerated, and it still hurt you. I don’t want to put you through that again.”

He was giving her an out, she realised, a way to accept his confession but still go back to Danny. _ You still get the choice. _ And this was it, then, the moment of truth. What was it that she really, truly wanted? A safe, stable life on Earth, children and grandchildren someday? Or roaming the universe with the man she loved?

Like it had ever really been a question.

“We’ll both just have to be careful, then,” she whispered, gazing up at him. “No dying for either of us.”

The Doctor raised his eyes to hers, questioning. “Clara...”

“Is this what _ you _want?” she asked him before he could retreat behind excuses. “To build a life with me? Just you and me, for however long we get?”

When he spoke next it was barely a breath, but it hit Clara with the force of a supernova, her universe collapsing and reforming itself around one word: 

“_Yes_.”

She smiled up at him tremulously, though she could feel tears gathering in her eyes again. “Then I’ve made my choice.”

“You’re certain?” he pressed.

“Always have been. I just didn’t realise it was a choice I could make.”

“And Danny?”

Clara took a deep breath and blinked back her tears. “I think at some level, he already knows. Knows how I feel about you. He doesn’t like being lied to, and said he doesn’t do _ weird_. He’ll understand, might even be relieved.”

Guilt flashed across the Doctor’s face. “I didn’t mean to make you choose between us.”

“You didn’t make me choose, Doctor,” she said, smiling at him and reaching up to touch his cheek again. “You gave me back the choice. It’s not a decision I’ll regret.”

He searched her face for a long moment, his expression as open and unguarded as a raw nerve, his love for her plain to see. “Just you and me, for however long we get?” he said, repeating her words back to her.

“For as long as we get,” she said, then pushed up on her toes and kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of the series For As Long As We Get, so don't forget to subscribe there to be notified of new stories! :D


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